Hard Times In Milwaukee

The Atlantic:

As Washington and Madison fiddle, this city's middle class is slowly deteriorating.
First, the numbers. From 1970 to 2007, the percentage of families in the Milwaukee metropolitan area that were middle class declined from 37 to 24 percent, according to a new analysis by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. During the same period, the proportion of affluent families grew from 22 to 27 percent-while the percentage of poor households swelled from 23 to 31 percent. In short, Milwaukee's middle class families went from a plurality to its smallest minority. 
The biggest culprit is the disappearance of well-paying manufacturing jobs. Despite a promising recent uptick in high-end manufacturing, Milwaukee has suffered a 40 percent decline in manufacturing jobs since 1970, when Schlitz, Pabst and American Motors reigned. Instead of shrinking, the city's urban poverty is creeping outward toward suburbs.
Late Wednesday afternoon, that was evident in the Jefferson Elementary school of West Allis, a once solidly middle class suburb bordering Milwaukee. In a crowded school gymnasium, principal Shelly Strasser said that fifty percent of students now qualify for free or reduced price school lunch programs. In other local schools, the number is ninety percent.
"It breaks your heart," said Strasser, a West Allis native who said she now has homeless students. "That's something we've never seen as a district."
The change also emerges in Cudahy, a once middle class suburb just south of the city. As a child, Debby Pizur watched traffic jams form on local streets during factory shifts changes. Today, many of those factories are shuttered, Pizur works three jobs at the age of 59, and runs a non-profit that provides food, clothing and household items to the community's poor.

The decline in manufacturing has been brutal for the Northeast and the Midwest.  The question is, how do we start to rebuild the middle class?  I would start by raising taxes on the high end and investing in education and infrastructure.  But we need to make some serious structural changes in our economy, and we don't have the political will to make them.  Milwaukee is a great town, and I hope the decline will end soon, with recovery bringing a better future.  But to keep from passing out, I won't hold my breath.